The first intimation that Paul Bunyan had of the coming struggle was during the preparations for logging off the mountain. He himself had made many plans for accomplishing the difficult job, taking time from his office work to think them out. Then the first drive was finished and the day came when felling was to begin on the mountain side. On that morning Paul Bunyan was about to call his foreman to give him instructions when he heard the loggers marching out of camp. Hels Helsen was taking them to the woods; the foreman had seemed to think it unnecessary to consult with Paul Bunyan. For a moment the master of the camp had a raging impulse to take after them and assert his authority, but his good sense restrained him. “There is no appetite more powerful than that for the strong meat of authority,” Paul Bunyan always told his bossmen. “But if you bite off more than you can chew, nothing will choke you more surely.” Paul Bunyan remembered this saying now, and he thought it best to let Hels Helsen learn the lesson for himself. So for days he made no inquiries about the progress of the work in the woods. He busied himself with his figures and waited. He noted with secret pleasure the bafflement and worry that showed in deeper lines on Hels Helsen’s face each succeeding night. The loggers were always utterly weary now when they got into camp; at last many of them were too exhausted to eat their pea soup when the day was done; others went to sleep at the supper table, and they would not awaken until breakfast time. Then the first week’s scale was brought in, and it showed only an average of one tree per man for each seventy-two hours of labor. The master logger chuckled over this, but he said nothing. On Monday morning, his accounts being in order, he walked over the hump to where he could observe the logging operations.